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Technology (Setting)
This is part of A Time of Eclipse from the Core Book. Technology pervades all aspects of existence in . Most individuals understand that unless transhumanity suffers another event like the Fall or they personally suffer some very serious and unfortunate accident, they are unlikely to permanently die. More people are now planning for a very long future. For most people these schemes are fairly minimal, but they often include an awareness that few, if any, relationships are likely to last an entire lifetime. However, functional immortality is only one of the many wonders of the modern world. Living with Infotech For anyone with basic mesh inserts or an ecto (meaning about ninety-six percent of the population), life is filled with data. For people with the best implants, all information available on the mesh is available at a thought. For everyone else, it only requires a brief pause to access and understand it. When someone pauses and looks a bit distracted in the midst of a conversation, everyone understands they are accessing data and lack the implants to allow them to do this subconsciously or via multi-tasking. As a result, when a group of people are discussing a topic and no one immediately knows an answer to a question, such as the title of a performer’s first vid, within a few seconds everyone has this information. Similarly, when someone walks through a garden, with a glance and perhaps a brief thought or small finger motion, they can call up detailed data on each and every species of plant that sits in front of them. Individuals going to remote areas that are out of normal mesh broadcasting range almost always either carry a farcaster-link or download massive archives into their implants or ecto so they can continue to access all the information they might need. Since even a basic implant can hold vast amounts of data, lack of storage space is rarely an issue. Access to such an immense amount of easily available information has resulted in a variety of cultural responses. Being able to quote from any vid, old movie, book, or historical speech is now trivially easy and can be done with a few seconds of thought. While children and young teens often play by interjecting large amounts of semi-appropriate famous quotes in their speech, most adults only do so for emphasis and in moderation. People who quote from other sources too often are considered dull and unimaginative. Recognizing such quotes is quite easy, since someone can simply set their muse to alert them to the nature and identity of all lengthy quotes they hear. All experienced mesh users also learn (typically as children and teens) how to avoid taking too much time out from conversations to check facts or access information via the mesh. Teens regularly mock their fellows who pause too often or too long in conversations to look up further information on a topic someone mentioned or who spend too long trying to assemble facts to support an argument. Terms like “meshed out” or “drooler” are used by teens to mock each other into learning how to be both discreet and faster in their information searches, at least when also interacting with others. While adults rarely engage in the same sort of direct and obvious mockery, people who get too lost in casual or conversational meshbrowsing are widely viewed as socially inept. As a result, implants that allow multi-tasking or temporarily speed up thought are in great demand, since they allow individuals to do extensive research and rehearse each statement they are going to make without a moment’s pause. People who can afford such accessories tend to seem more suave, charismatic, and intelligent than those who do not. All this means that those who lack all mesh and AR access — individuals known as zeroes — present a stark contrast to the rest of transhumanity. To most people, zeroes seem slow, forgetful, and almost unbelievably dense, while to zeroes, even people who only possess ectos or basic implants seems brilliant, witty, and able to comprehend things with almost inhuman speed. Going Beyond the Known One of the oddest experiences for gatecrashers and others who explore unusual environments such as the ruins of Earth is the unavailability of data. They look at an alien plant or a TITAN-mutated person, and their search returns various error messages meaning that there is either no data at all on the subject or that the only data is purely speculative and should be regarded as dangerously unreliable. This can be especially troubling when the subject in question is a small creature that has just landed on the person’s shoulder and the individual wants to know if it’s harmless or deadly. Most people who are less than sixty years old have never been in an environment where they could not gain basic information about everything around them at a glance. Learning to overcome the shock of not knowing anything at all about something is one of the first and most crucial skills all gatecrashers must learn. Muse Most individuals have a dedicated AI that serves as their media agent. Commonly known as a muse, this AI has been a lifelong companion for most people less than seventy years old. Muses learn their owners’ tastes, habits, and preferences, and do their best to make life and technology use as easy as possible. Muses act as alarm clocks, data retrieval gophers, appointment schedulers, accountants, and many other functions often limited only by their owners’ imaginations. Some of their tasks do not even need to be assigned—muses are skilled at learning their owner’s preferences and acting on them. For example, the muse’s scheduling function may overhear in conversation that its user needs to be up in the morning and so it will set an alarm without any additional instructions. If a muse is uncertain about its owner’s preferences, it asks, but after working with a user for a few decades muses rarely need to do this. Most people keep multiple backups of their muse, because the loss of a muse can be almost as traumatic as the death of a loved one. Using a generic muse who must be informed about all aspects of a user’s individual preferences and fed a constant stream of instructions helps people appreciate the value of their own personal muse agent. Muses generally learn the basics of a new user’s preferences in a month or two, but during that learning period the user tends to be irritable and forgetful, since the tasks they generally trust their muse to do automatically are not being taken care of. Attitudes Toward AGIs The vast majority of transhumanity blames the Fall on rogue seed AIs (self-improving artificial intelligences). As a result, any AIs that are not crippled or somehow limited from improving themselves — including the AGIs (artificial general intelligences) that were common and growing in number before the Fall — are completely illegal in many habitats or at least heavily regulated. The Fall ended only slightly more than a decade ago, and many transhumans consider AGIs and the TITANs that murdered their homeworld to be one and the same. In addition to strict anti-AGI laws, there have been occasional riots and mass panics surrounding facilities still performing AGI research, which has pushed most such research into isolated settlements. Nevertheless, there are still people passionately devoted to AGIs; some see them as the next step in posthuman evolution, others value all sapience, and still others actually worship them. However, AGI supporters have learned to keep their opinions private in mixed company, lest they be branded an agent of the TITANs. In some spots, mostly in the more anarchistic outer system, attitudes towards AGIs are more relaxed and AGIs may even be openly welcomed. These places recognize that AGIs are not the same threat posed by seed AIs and it is unfair to punish one for the actions of the other. Naturally, these places are havens for the AGIs active in transhuman society, who otherwise must disguise their true natures. In the tightly controlled inner system, the hypercorps and the Planetary Consortium foster anti-AGI sentiments both as safety measures and as protection against possible competitors. This latter point is one of the things that makes them attractive to some people in the outer system; they understand the great advantages their factions gain... assuming, that is, that those AGIs share their goals and ideals. Attitudes Towards Mental Alterations In the post-Fall solar system, technology can alter people’s minds; controversy about many of these alterations remains. Few people have trouble with the idea of creating short-term forks using the multitasking augmentation or some similar process that insures the forks will be re-integrated within a few hours. However, the idea of long-term forks, and especially of allowing forks to gain access to their own separate morphs, troubles many people. Since there are not enough morphs to go around in the first place, providing morphs to a fork strikes many people as selfish and wasteful. On the rare occasion that people sleeve one of their forks, they typically provide it with a synthmorph to avoid the social stigma associated with using more than one body at a time. Forks that exist for more than a few hours inspire discomfort in many people because the forks begin to diverge slightly in personality. Most people find the idea of two different and distinct versions of themselves to be somewhat disturbing. While there are habitats (mostly in the outer system) where forking is a regular part of daily life and forks often exist independently for a day or two, most visitors find such habitats distasteful and bizarre. However, while voluntary forking is still regarded as somewhat odd, involuntary uses of this and the associated mental technologies are so horrifying that they form the basis of much lurid crime fiction. Someone being unknowingly mind-napped and having an involuntary — and often secret — fork created is something that people regard with abject terror, despite it being quite rare. Similarly, while mental surgery to correct psychiatric problems or as punishment for various serious crimes is frightening and disturbing in its own right, illegal brain hacking draws horror and disgust from almost everyone in the solar system. Penalties for involuntary forking and mind hacking are exceptionally high. In many habitats, they are among the few crimes punishable by death (including the destruction of all backups and forks). Travel Travel between habitats and other transhuman colonies is both exceedingly easy and fairly costly. Long-range egocasting is expensive, as is acquiring a morph at the destination. Travelers have developed various ways around this obstacle; for example, if someone only needs to visit another habitat for a few days and is visiting primarily to engage in real-time communication, they often choose to remain an infomorph for the duration of their visit and to communicate via AR, thus saving all resleeving expenses. For visitors who require a morph but will not be staying long, most habitats offer the option of renting a generic splicer or synthmorph or, for a slightly higher cost, a generic exalt morph. Habitats or worlds with unusual requirements, like Mars, Europa, or the various zero-g stations offer rusters, bouncers, or other morphs modified for specific local conditions. These morphs can be used for up to a week without difficulty, and using one for up to a month is usually possible with sufficient negotiation and payment. Meanwhile, the traveler’s previous morph is kept in medical stasis back in their home habitat, waiting for their ego to return. Another technique is morph trading by people from different habitats who know each other and who are traveling at the same time. A few people do this with strangers they meet on the mesh, but vids and other entertainments are filled with tales of people having their morphs or their identity stolen. A few of these horror stories are based on actual accounts. Very few people are willing to let anyone they do not know and trust use their body, and many people simply will not lend out their morph to anyone at all. Some people, however, are willing, for a fee, to act as a living “taxi” for a visiting infomorph, carrying it around with them. In these cases the “ghostriding” infomorph is not permitted to control their host’s morph directly and is simply a passenger along for the ride, issuing directions and communicating with their transporters electronically. Travelers who wish to either immigrate to a new habitat or visit one for several months or longer must acquire their own morph. Usually, they reduce the cost of acquiring a new morph by selling their previous morph to a body bank. Alternately, some individuals sleeved in expensive custom-designed morphs who are traveling relatively short distances will rent a generic shell for several weeks and arrange to have their old morph shipped to them on a fairly rapid freighter. Doing this is rarely more than a moderate expense, which makes it less expensive than the costs of buying or replacing high-end custom modified morphs. Privacy Privacy is a prized possession for most inhabitants of the solar system, but it is so rare that for many people it might as well be a foreign concept. In the 20th and early 21st century, privacy consisted of two concepts that are now completely separate—the ability to remain unnoticed or anonymous and the ability to avoid unwanted intrusion. The first is largely absent from the lives of most people in the present day. Anyone who uploads anything to a non-private portion of the mesh understands that anyone who wishes to do so can gain access to it. Likewise, anyone who spends time in a public place understands that anyone can learn where they went, what they did, and what they said due to the ubiquity of meshed, sensor-enabled devices. As a result, everyone’s public life, both on the mesh and in person, can be transformed into an easily searchable database. Almost everyone keeps such a record of their own lives, commonly known as a lifelog. Most people allow their lifelogs to be public, understanding that anonymity is now an archaic concept. While the interiors of private dwellings remain free from continuous surveillance, almost all habitats have emergency sensors in every building providing a full record of events to emergency service workers and AIs in case of problems such as a dangerous chemical leak, a sufficiently large fire, an explosion, loss of air pressure, or some other equally dramatic and potentially dangerous event. Both the events of the Fall and the fact that almost all of transhumanity now lives in habitats surrounded by hostile environments mean that such sensors are standard fare. A few habitats do not allow emergency sensors in private dwellings, but most people regard these habitats as potential death traps. These emergency sensors do not record anything other than the absence of potential dangers if they are not triggered by specific events. This limitation allows individuals privacy within their own residences—as long as they are certain no one has planted a secret recording device in their home. Ultimately, remaining unobserved is a matter of both care and trust, and everyone understands that most of the time everything they do will be part of the vast public record. In vivid contrast, the freedom to avoid unwanted intrusion is carefully prized by the inhabitants of the post-Fall era. Unwanted personal or data intrusion into someone’s private dwelling or personal electronic files is a serious crime in most habitats. Also, while both the mesh and augmented reality are filled with all manner of AI-mediated adware, most of it has evolved to be relatively benign and to provide non-intrusive suggestions about goods, information, and services that are likely to be of legitimate interest to the targeted person. An individual’s muse filters out unwanted advertising. While it is certainly possible to create advertising that can hack through any muse’s filters, doing so is usually illegal. Unwanted AR intrusions are similarly limited. During the early days of AR technology, there were serious problems with users being overwhelmed with unrequested and distracting input — as many said, the mist got very thick indeed, so both law and custom changed to prevent such invasions. Today, most people expect to only experience data that they are looking for or that they might be interested in and that any data they are not interested in will quickly vanish. Being surrounded by a large amount of unwanted AR data is not just annoying and distracting, it is also deeply frightening, because it means that there is a serious problem with either the habitat’s mesh or the person’s electronics — it could even mean that the entire habitat is under direct attack by infowar weapons. Low-Tech Existence More than ninety-five percent of transhumanity inhabits artificially created morphs. Most of them also possess basic implants, and the vast majority of the rest wear ectos with retina displays and other simple peripherals that allow the user to fully perceive and interact with the vast network of information around them. However, slightly less than four percent of the remaining population inhabit flats or splicer morphs without basic implants and also lack access to ectos and other basic technologies. Since an ecto is both a relatively trivial expense and a piece of equipment vital to existence in the solar system, the only individuals who lack such technologies stand on the very lowest rungs of the social ladder. A few are the poorest members of the most marginal habitats, but most are slaves or the next best thing. The lowest social classes in the Jovian Republic lack personal infotech access, as do people indentured to the hypercorps and the Planetary Consortium, particularly on Luna and Mars. These individuals are either indentured criminals or people sufficiently lacking in useful skills that they are assigned mindless physical tasks that cannot be more efficiently performed by AIs. The lack of mesh access makes these unfortunate “zeroes” into mental and social cripples, unable to perceive the vast wealth of AR that most people take for granted. They are also unable to communicate with anyone beyond the range of their voice or to access almost all information, including traffic signals and shop displays. When necessary, the managers and overseers in charge of groups of zeroes allow them access to handheld meshbrowsers. These devices resemble the handheld terminals common in the early 21st century and have limited functionality, typically forbidding communication and restricting mesh research to carefully filtered topics. Because of their inability to access AR or the mesh, zeroes are almost completely isolated from everyone else, meaning they are also unable to organize effectively or to otherwise cause trouble for the people who control them. In much of the outer system, the existence of zeroes is considered one of the greatest crimes against transhumanity perpetrated by the Planetary Consortium and the Jovian Republic. Life, Death, and Morphs While death is no longer a certainty for transhumanity, it remains a possibility. During the decade preceding the Fall, most of transhumanity was growing used to the idea that immortality was in their grasp. Then, in just a few short years, the TITANs wiped out more than ninety percent of us. Faced with the horror of so much needless death, efforts to insure the lives of surviving transhumans became a top priority. Now, the technology of immortality — uploading, cortical stacks, and other related wonders — is commonplace. Today, most of the residents of the solar system have adjusted to this fact (except for the most extreme bioconservatives); everyone expects both to live forever and to have their friends, loved ones, and enemies do the same. While death is rare, though, it is still possible. Severe accidents can destroy someone’s cortical stack as well as their brain, and egos can also be wiped away in punishment for sufficiently heinous crimes — though the process of execution is considerably more difficult than it had been a few decades earlier. For most people (with the exception of those too poor to afford a new morph), non-permanent death is an annoyance equivalent to events that most people in the late 20th century regarded as moderate misfortunes, like a bad stomach flu or a broken arm. In almost all habitats, if anyone is responsible for someone’s temporary death, either accidentally or on purpose, they are also responsible for paying for the person’s resleeving in an identical morph, especially if that person does not have some form of resleeving insurance. People who have temporarily died can expect to receive visits from everyone they are at all close to after their resleeving, as well as a host of e-cards and perhaps a few gifts from their acquaintances and colleagues, all expressing sympathy at their death and welcoming them back to the world of the physically embodied. Exchanging such “life gifts” is an accepted part of belonging to many professions such as emergency service workers, where members regularly risk temporary death. Deliberately choosing to change morphs or to temporarily become an infomorph is treated differently. People typically spend at least a day or two between deciding to change morphs and actually doing so. During this time, it is considered polite for someone to inform everyone they know well or work with about their upcoming resleeving. Along with personal visits, as well as calls and e-cards detailing the time of the upcoming event, the person who is resleeving is expected to include an image of what their new morph will look like, so people they know will be able to easily recognize them. However, it is considered gauche for someone who is upgrading to a better morph to include details about their new morph. Within a few days of resleeving, a “resleeving party” is typically held to introduce everyone they know to their new morph. Depending upon how well-off, well-known, and social the individual is, these parties range from lavish affairs held in hotel ballrooms to small intimate gatherings in the person’s home. Permanent death is treated very differently. Because it is both relatively rare and no longer expected, the old funerary rituals surrounding death have faded and new traditions have grown in their place. Since every death reminds many people of the billions who permanently died during the Fall, most of the few funerals that are held honor both the person who just died as well as the victims of the near-apocalypse. Entertainment and Media A substantial amount of media survives the Fall of Earth, and a significant number of modern transhumans make their living creating new songs, stories, reports, or other media. All of this is easily and swiftly accessible through any basic implant, ecto, or (on very rare occasions) archaic handheld terminal. However, most of this media is not to the taste of any particular individual, and vast amounts of it are mediocre. As a result, most humans keep two layers of evaluation between them and anything they might consider exposing themselves to. The first layer is based on popularity and critical reviews. Every piece of media has a rating, often weighted by the opinions of critics with high rep scores who comment on their virtues and faults. Specialized AIs also evaluate the responses of consumers, so individuals can use reviewers they trust or they can seek out media that is either widely or specifically popular in their particular demographic and subcultural niche. The second filter layer is the individual’s muse. Muses learn their owner’s tastes and moods and automatically search out and recommend various sorts of media. Individuals can do everything from asking their muse to select something they will enjoy to asking for a something that will challenge their opinions or looking at all current events news that will be of interest to them. Muses use their understanding of their user’s preferences, mixed with ratings and reviews, to make their decisions. Individuals can even set their muses to edit the media itself so that it better fits with the person’s interests and preferences. In the most extreme cases, this process can twist and edit news so that it bears no relation to real events. This same process is used to make the characters and dialog in novels and vids more appealing. More commonly, the muses merely edit out aspects of a news story or article in which the individual is not interested. Ratings, reviews, and muses allow individuals to avoid media overload, but they also reinforce subcultural barriers. A great many people only seek out media and news that reinforces their existing opinions and beliefs. Xenophobic individuals who distrust all non-humans, from uplifted octopi to the Factors, regularly view news stories and AR dramas about evil aliens and devious uplifted animals who commit heinous crimes. Similarly, individuals who are only interested in their own habitat have all external news altered by their muses so that it refers only to the effects outside events will have on their station. In a very real sense, individuals from radically different subcultures and demographics inhabit completely different worlds. The one force that works against this separation is the fact that many people wish to follow the lives and opinions of those with the highest reputation scores. In many cases, a large portion of these individual’s high rep scores comes from their interest in and willingness to interact with (or at least acknowledge) a wide variety of different sources of information. As a result, listening to opinions by a high-rep celebrity can expose people to information that they might never encounter otherwise. Also, in many habitats, AIs responsible for media distribution tag some news as being sufficiently important that it should be immune to filtering by muses. This tagging is a regular and expected occurrence in some habitats, while in others it is reserved for only the most important and potentially life-saving information. Bypassing muses for any less important reason in these stations is considered a gross invasion of privacy or even a crime. Popular Types of Entertainment The most popular forms of electronic entertainments are vids, vid games, VR worlds, XP, and AR games. Vids and Vid Games Vids are high-resolution audiovisual entertainment that can be augmented with fully immersive sensations such as smell, touch, and taste from the point of view of one of the major characters. Viewing them purely via sight and sound is much like watching an old 20th-century film, except that it’s interactive and in 3D. In contrast, full sensory viewing is like being present in the story. Most modern vids have variable theme and preference settings enabling viewers to adjust the content of what they are watching, including the level of violence, the amount and type of sexuality they prefer, and the appearances of some or all of the major characters. In addition, many vids have alternate endings for people who prefer happy, bittersweet, or grim endings. Two people watching the same vid could have very different experiences if they use radically different settings. Vid games are like vids, except they are much more flexible. In vid games, the viewer not only experiences the story with the protagonist — they become the protagonist, shaping the story through their own actions, similar to sophisticated early 21st-century console games. Some games allow the participation of up to a dozen individuals or link thousands of players via the mesh, while others are designed for a single player. The degree of freedom in vid games varies. Some are almost fully interactive realms similar to VR worlds with all but a few characters controlled by AIs, while others are considerably simpler and more limited with player interaction limited to a few crucial decisions. The precise dividing line between vids and vid games is blurry, but together these media remain the most popular forms of entertainment, with scenarios set on Earth before the Fall being especially prevalent. XP Experience playback - or XP as it is known - is a specialized type of media that consists of the recorded sensory impressions of a single individual. Almost all of the inhabitants of the solar system lead relatively quiet and risk-averse lives and are naturally eager to be able to vividly experience adventures such as climbing Olympus Mons, spending a day in one of the most luxurious and exotic private habitats, going on a scavenging mission to Earth, or gatecrashing. There is also a thriving fringe market in less savory XP, including records of people committing all manner of violent or dangerous crimes and XP of actual gun battles between well-armed criminals and law enforcement personnel, which often end with the death of the morph providing the point of view. Anyone with mesh inserts can create XP of their experiences, and anyone with an ecto or mesh inserts can access the sensory recordings. Selling a particularly exciting XP, such as a record of the first meeting with the Factors, can bring in a lot of money or rep. Most XPs consist of both sensory recordings and the surface thoughts of the individual who made them. Many people who access XP are only interested in the sensory recordings and feel that having another person’s recorded thoughts and emotions in their head is intrusive and uncomfortable so they filter them out. However, some hardcore XP aficionados feel that accessing the full XP, including the recorded thoughts and emotions, makes the experience more immersive and real. A significant minority of XP fans becomes fascinated with one or two daring people who regularly sell XP, known as X-casters, viewing all of their clips, including both the experiences and the accompanying thoughts. Some of these XP fans become more interested in the person who recorded the clip than in the individual experiences, and they often come to believe that they have a special, clear understanding of this person, to the point where they strongly identify or even fall in love with them. In addition, individuals who access XPs from a single person often enough sometimes begin to mimic various habits and figures of speech. Particularly popular X-casters are commonly disturbed when they see tens of thousands of people imitating one of their more idiosyncratic expressions or habits. A few serious fans—known as Xers (pronounced “ex-ers”) — alter their morphs to resemble their favorite X-caster. Some obsessive Xers actually attempt to contact and stalk certain X-casters, perhaps hoping to become part of an actual XP clip. In most habitats and subcultures, Xers are widely regarded as having particularly dull and meaningless lives. Hardcore Xers are often viewed as being insecure and potentially unstable. AR Games Augmented reality - or AR as it is called - games involve players interacting both with events in the physical world and augmented reality imagery that recasts the people and objects the players see. For example, instead of seeing another player in a splicer morph and ordinary clothing, a player of an AR game might see a horrific rotting zombie, a bizarre alien life form, or a well-armed soldier. These games tend to be locally focused within a particular habitat or city so players can interact when they are within physical proximity, but some games link habitats within the same cultural region. The nature and intensity of these games varies widely. Long-term games might involve people playing the role of deep cover spies or some other exciting and unique role for months on end. Players may pretend to be anything from time travelers attempting to prevent some horrible disaster to covert agents attempting to uncover plots by TITAN-infected people on their habitat who happen to be camouflaged as snack designers, personal assistants, and other mundane citizens. During their daily lives, players exchange messages with each other as well as with the people running and maintaining the game. Some of these long-term AR games have gone on for many years, with the oldest being almost twenty years old, predating the Fall. Short-term AR games, on the other hand, last between several hours and several days. The people running these typically rent out a hotel or a park and various public buildings for the duration. These games are almost always highly dramatic and consist of everything from the players having to deal with a massive zombie attack or alien invasion to them participating in some simulation of an event on Earth, like the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution. While such AR games can be considerably less detailed than VR worlds or vid games, many players value the “realism” of being physically present during the game. Since participants in AR games take actions in the real world, including actions that could be disruptive or even dangerous, designers of AR games take great care to prevent problems. In some early AR games, most of which took place more than twenty years before the Fall, players were occasionally seriously injured. A few unscrupulous AR game designers used their scenarios as cover for actual robberies or acts of terrorism that were abetted by unwitting players who thought their actions were simply part of a game. Since that time, law enforcement observation drones have kept careful track of people playing AR games. In almost all habitats, people running AR games must register their games with local law enforcement or face serious fines. VR Worlds Virtual reality - or VR as it is known - worlds involve the creation of a large and highly immersive simulated environment — a simulspace — where the major characters are played by transhumans and NPCs by AIs. Unlike vids or vid games, simulspaces are specifically designed for a large number of participants. VR worlds consist of everything from duplicates of various eras of Earth history to elaborate and strange fantasy worlds with magic, dragons, and similar wonders. All manner of alien worlds or settings based on oddities like time travel are also common. As is the case with vids, the most popular simulspaces are those set on Earth some time before the Fall. VR worlds can have from dozens to tens of thousands of participants. For the best experience, many users prefer to access simulspaces through hardwired server connections as they offer better quality and less disruptions than accessing wirelessly via the mesh. Since people immersed in virtual reality are cut off from their bodies and often thrash around, most users ensconce their morphs in a tank or special couch for the duration. VR parlors typically offer private hardwired pods for participants to physically jack in. Many habitats also have hardwired systems used just for this purpose, so users can experience VR from the comfort of their own dwellings. Due to distance and communication lags between habitats, even the most popular online simulspaces run each habitat as a separate realm, limiting interaction with users in other habitats/realms. The popularity of VR worlds like Gilded Empire, set in England in the 1880s, means that someone moving from one habitat or world to another could continue playing in the same game, albeit with a new set of players. One of the other unusual features of VR settings is that a large number of infomorphs, including many infomorph refugees, play these games. As a result, while even most novice players can learn to easily tell the difference between a character played by an AI and one played by an actual person, there is no way to know if the person playing a character has a physical body or not. Physical Entertainment In addition to a vast array of electronic and electronically mediated entertainments, people also still enjoy a wide variety of physical sports, ranging from soccer to new sports like low-g air races, where the participants strap on wings and engage in tests of speed and acrobatics. The ability to both fix any injury in a healing vat and to remove a cortical stack from a dead or dying body and place it in a new morph has given rise to a new variety of extreme sports. Starting a decade before the Fall, various individuals realized that, barring unlikely circumstances, they could not die unless they wanted to. This set off a brief trend in extreme sports and even a few wealthy suicide hobbyists who repeatedly killed off their current morph in a variety of unusual ways. The Fall and the permanent death of more than ninety percent of transhumanity greatly reduced the interest in playing with death for many years. Killing yourself just to experience death is considered mildly distasteful to most, and many believe such actions belittle the mass deaths of the Fall. Though interest in risking death in the line of entertainment has been growing, deliberate suicide remains an eccentric and dubiously regarded hobby. In some subcultures, dueling has been a popular fad for almost a decade. Swords, knives, and pistols firing single-shot soft lead bullets are all popular choices, because none of these weapons poses any threat to a cortical stack and most do not instantly kill someone hit by them. However, there are other more exotic options, including aerial duels with microlights fitted with blades on their wings. On rare occasions, duels take place in space, with the participants wearing non-armored vacuum suits. Certain criminal groups make money with underground dueling circuits, pitting biomorphs against robots against uplifts. The seedier circuits engage in pit fights featuring illegally acquired backups sleeved into non-sapient animals, often outfitted with lethal cybernetics. Such creatures are typically quite mad. Dangerous non-combative sports are also popular. The highest levels of competitive rock climbing on Mars are regularly done with no safety equipment. There are similar climbing competitions in many habitats using artificially constructed climbing walls as well as regular free-running competitions through almost every city and habitat. Also, there is an entire class of sports, including both diving and parachuting, where perfection of form is seen as a far more important goal than avoiding injury or even death. As a result, current high dive records for morphs not specially modified to survive high impacts are held by individuals who required either time in a healing vat or resleeving immediately after their successful breaking of a previous record. Category:Setting Category:Core Book